At this point, I need to say a couple of things
about this poem, I think.
It's a poem called "School Figures."
The title refers, by the time the poem gets done,
to a number of things.
But I had primarily in mind the phrase
as it's used in competitive ice skating.
Competitive ice skating, I mean, we see it in the Olympics.
They televise it.
And what we see is the most glamorous and spectacular part.
This is the part where Peggy Fleming,
or whoever this year's model of Peggy Fleming
is in that long line of figure skaters,
skates in a diaphanous gown to Ravel's "Bolero"
and does spectacular moves.
That's called "free skating."
And the skaters have to do six or eight given maneuvers
during the time that they're doing that,
and they have to do those with a certain degree of skill.
But the whole rest of the routine
can be put together in order to be dramatic, and flashy,
and exciting, and to stir up interest and so forth.
But that's the second part of the competition.
The first part, which I don't think is usually televised,
is school figures.
And the one reason why it's not usually televised
is because it's the dullest sport known to humans.
And it is not dull to the participants,
but it has no spectator interest of any particular kind,
unless you were an absolute crazed aficionado of ice
skating.
People go out and they make figures,
and they retrace them over and over again.
The one everybody knows is the Figure Eight.
Here's how you're supposed to make that.
You have to try and transcribe a perfect eight.
But being more-- you're eight won't be quite perfect.
So then what you have to do after that
is duplicate your error each time
without deviating from that.
There's something wonderfully fiendish about that.
Surely this is the most puritanical
of all sports events, where you retrace your error
over and over and over again.
[LAUGHTER]
My sister has become, in her adult life,
a professional dancer of some real skill and--
and achievement, years of incredible hard work,
unbelievably cranky diets, and so
what began the life that led her to that odd state
by being a child figure skater.
And starting at the age of about five,
she would push off onto the ice at this little backwater ice
arena in Troy, Ohio, where the Hobart Manufacturing
Company that makes scales, and restaurant supplies,
and arc welding equipment, and so forth had,
as a gift to the town, 50% of whose members
Hobart had underpaid for 38 years running,
gave the town an arena and bought them a minor league
hockey team.
And indoor ice came to Troy, Ohio.
And my sister was one of the first persons
to scratch that ice up.
She was about five, and they put her
in one of those crazy little costumes.
And this tiny child with little braids and the sort
of stricken look on her face, which
meant loosely, I like this, but I
have no idea why I'm doing it, would
go out every morning on the ice and work
for an hour and a half.
I would often accompany her.
And the adults, same people, were asleep.
It'd be 5:30 in the morning when we'd go over to the arena.
This poem is about that; it's called "School Figures."
It's best to work before dawn--
fresh ice, its surface silvered and opaque.
And you scritch out onto the milky ice,
not avid for grammar, too sleepy for speech.
It's not that you're marking time;
you're melting it grainy under your runners.
Each time you sweep in your half-sleep around the figure
eight, your blades are duller and record
how far you've slid from your margin of error, zero.
That's why you skate it backwards.
It's where you've been you have to go again, alert enough
to numb every muscle memory but one.
So much learning is forgetting the many mistakes
for the few lines clear of the flourishes
you thought were style but were only
personality, indelible as that seemed.
Who but you could forge those stern exclusions?
Where the line of concentration crosses itself,
cutting and tying its knot both, there learning and forgetting
are one attention, and are the thrall
that pulls you stiff-ankled over the eyes
before dawn, turning over your shoulder
as if you could skate back into your first path
and get it right for once.